Here are some ideas that may help:
- Finish up business from our childhoods, as best as we can. Grieve. Get some perspective. Figure out how events from
our childhoods are affecting what we're doing now.
A client who has been in committed love relationships with two alcoholics told me the following story. Her father left
home when she was five years old. He had been drunk for most of those five years. Although they lived in the same city,
she rarely saw her father after he
page_104Page 105moved out. He visited her a few times after her mother divorced him, but there was no substance to the relationship. As
she grew up, she called her father from time to time to tell him about important events in her life: high school graduation,
her marriage, the birth of her first child, her divorce, her remarriage, her second pregnancy. Each time she called, her
father talked to her for five minutes, mentioned seeing her sometime, then hung up. She said she didn't feel particularly
hurt or angry; she expected this from him. He had never been there for her. He never would be there for her. He didn't
participate in the relationship. There was nothing, including love, coming back from him. But it was a fact of life, and it
did not particularly upset her. She truly thought she had resigned herself to and dealt with her father's alcoholism. This
relationship went on this way for years. Her relationships with alcoholics went on for years.
When she was in the midst of her most recent divorce, the phone rang one evening. It was her father. It was the first time
he had ever called her. Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest, she reported later. Her father asked how she and her
family werea question he usually avoided. Just as she was wondering if she could tell him about her divorce (something
she wanted to do; she had always wanted to cry and be comforted by her father) he began whining about how he had
been locked up in a psychiatric ward, he had no rights, it wasn't fair, and couldn't she do something to help him? She
quickly wrapped up the conversation, hung up the phone, sat down on the floor, and bawled.
"I remember sitting on the floor screaming: 'You've never been there for me. Never. And now I need you. I let myself
need you just once, and you weren't there for me. Instead, you wanted me to take care of you.'
"When I quit crying, I felt strangely peaceful," she said. "I think it was the first time I ever let myself grieve or get angry
at my father. Over the next few weeks, I began to understandreally understand. Of course he had never been there for me.
He was an alcoholic. He had never been there for anyone, including himself. I also began to realize that underneath my
sophisticated veneer, I felt unlovable. Very unlovable. Somewhere, hidden inside me, I had maintained a fantasy that I
had a loving
page_105Page 106father who was staying away from mewho was rejecting mebecause I wasn't good enough. There was something wrong
with me. Now I knew the truth. It wasn't me that was unlovable. It wasn't me that was screwed up, although I know I've
got problems. It was he.
"Something happened to me after that," she said. "I no longer need an alcoholic to love me. The truth has indeed set me
free."
I am not suggesting that all of this woman's problems were solved when she finished her grieving or by one moment of
awareness. She may have more grieving to do; she still needs to deal with her codependent characteristics. But I think
what happened helped her.
- Nurture and cherish that frightened, vulnerable, needy child inside us. The child may never completely disappear, no
matter how self-sufficient we become. Stress may cause the child to cry out. Unprovoked, the child may come out and
demand attention when we least expect it.
I had a dream about this that I think illustrates the point. In my dream, a girl about nine years old had been left alone,
abandoned by her mother for several days and nights. Without supervision, the child ran around the neighborhood late at